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Maladaptive Frugality

herbertlui.net

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Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#231

Post by graemep »

catlogbindiff wrote: post #136
RickJWagner wrote: post #112

Spending money sparingly is like reducing weight in an automobile. A car will get better gas mileage, go faster, break less often, and be more responsive with less weight. So it is with spending. When you spend less, you can retire earlier, your finances are more secure, you feel less pressure and stress, etc. You have more flexibility in the kinds of jobs you can take. Perhaps best of all, you end up accumulating le…

Retiring early is a single guy internet myth. If you have a family, forget it. If you have a health condition, forget it. If you don’t have low risk investments, forget it. In the US health care can reset your bank account in the blink of an eye which is why so many many people in tech work until Medicare kicks in. Early retirement with a family is at least 10 mil in cash. Better enjoy your job because you’ll be doin…

Healthcare is a US only problem. There are definitely people who make enough to retire early if they do not develop expensive tastes. In any case GP said, 'earlier', not 'early'. Why do you need that much if you live simply?

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#233

Post by ChuckMcM »

May I suggest you read, "Scarcity: Why having too little means so much" (https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebo...) it is a really interesting book which explores maladaptive frugality. We often talk about money and how people don't have enough, but these principles apply to any resource, in my own case I found cases where 'never having enough time' would push me to make bad choices about how I spent time. The author is talking about spending money but consider the adage "If its worth doing over then its worth doing right the first time."

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#234

Post by badpun »

catlogbindiff wrote: post #136
RickJWagner wrote: post #112

Spending money sparingly is like reducing weight in an automobile. A car will get better gas mileage, go faster, break less often, and be more responsive with less weight. So it is with spending. When you spend less, you can retire earlier, your finances are more secure, you feel less pressure and stress, etc. You have more flexibility in the kinds of jobs you can take. Perhaps best of all, you end up accumulating le…

Retiring early is a single guy internet myth. If you have a family, forget it. If you have a health condition, forget it. If you don’t have low risk investments, forget it. In the US health care can reset your bank account in the blink of an eye which is why so many many people in tech work until Medicare kicks in. Early retirement with a family is at least 10 mil in cash. Better enjoy your job because you’ll be doin…

Aren't there health insurance plans with a high deducible (say $10k) that are quite affordable? In your early retirement, you can cover catastrophic health failures with them, and pay for everything else out of pocket.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#235

Post by bdangubic »

zajio1am wrote: post #209
bdangubic wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

being debt assumes appreciation on the asset you are holding under that debt which has been artificially inflated by the governments for yeeeeears now. you would never hold a debt on the house (even at 3.5%) if the house stayed the same price the day of the purchase and date of the sale. too many people are saying “some debt is good/great” which is only marginally true if you make certain assumptions which is exactly…

Even if the house prices stayed the same, it would make sense to keep the low interest debt and invest in other assets that have higher yield, like shares.

this again assumes a lot… it assumes that you can make up the money you are donating to lenders with some ficticious higher yield investments. I’d ballpark less that 5% of people would make out on the positive side of this.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#236

Post by sq_ »

jjice wrote: post #143
chromacity wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I went the other way round in the Bay Area. PG&E bills were so high so it was the choice of putting on a jacket or paying $1k extra over the winter months. And my reasoning was "I can afford a jacket".

I think I would still take that option, at least partially! Our gas bills where I am have gotten awful in recent years after the gas company separated from it's parent and all the homes (apartments) around here have god awful insulation since they're 80-150 years old. I bought some fleece sweatpants for $40 and the amount I was able to keep my home unheated was totally fine and I made that money back within that mont…

Where I live these days, it's 50/50 heat included in rent versus not, and I have to remind my friends that literally all of the buildings they rent in are 50+ years old.

And if your landlord is balking at including heat in rent, there's a decent chance it's because your bill will be outrageous because there's zero insulation, and as a tenant there's little you can do to fix that.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#237

Post by ubermonkey »

bigfudge wrote: post #161
ubermonkey wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cannot, because they are wrong. And I say this as a person who has owned no small number of fancy cars (but I got better). A new base-model Prius is absurdly luxurious compared to a base model car of 1975 or 1985 or even 1995. If you have lived long enough to see this change, then dropping 2x or 3x or 10x the cost of the Prius self-evidently puts you wildly beyond the point of diminishing returns. The Prius is g…

Even in motorsports, presumably it’s still mostly showing off? Unless you are a pro, you’d still lose any seriously comepetitivr race and have plenty to learn and enjoy driving a not-quite-top of the line sports car? I don’t know motorsports, but in all the sports I do know it’s that way. Tennis, cycling… there are serious diminishing returns in all of those and most kit spending isn’t justified by performance as muc…

That's definitely true, and I have a whole other rant how my cycling pals and I love to poke fun at dudes who show up to the group ride on a brand new $10,000 bike and get dropped before the midpoint.

BUT! It's easier than you think to get a point in participatory motorsports where the difference between, say, a Cayman and a Miata is something you can actively use.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#238

Post by jimbokun »

_alternator_ wrote: post #145
square_usual wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After my last job in tech I took about a half a year off before realizing I also felt guilty about not working, and took a job I wanted Well, yeah, that's kind of the problem. If you're the kind of person who can FIRE, you're not the kind of person who'll be happy on permanent vacation at the age of 40. It's nice to have that option, but many people who get into FIRE commit themselves to a lifetime of slight misery…

I think this is a false dichotomy. My wife and I worked through our 20s, but regularly took vacations. We flew to NYC from LA at least 2x per year from 25-30. We had season ski passes. We lived frugally but well. I was in grad school, she was a consultant. Our income was solidly lower middle class for LA, and we still managed to save 25-40% of our income per year. Now that I've got a kid and am in my 40s, I've taken…

OK if you were in grad school, ski passes, multiple flights to NYC per year, living in LA and saving 20-40% of your income, your wife must have been making a hell of a lot as a consultant.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#239

Post by jimbokun »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #188
ge96 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age is a thing, can't do as many of the fun physical things when you're a lot older Aging is a nasty thing ugh, the way your bones get weak and your spine curls and you see old people hunched looking down at the ground when they walk

The truth is that there are some things better experienced in younger years. I can't imagine backpacking across Europe is better in your 50's than it would be in your 20's, and if you're doing something with a chance of injury, you bounce back a lot faster the younger you are. But I really think you're underestimating how active even the average 70 year old retiree can be.

That just comes down to luck.

Some people at 70 are in great health, some not so much.

Re: Maladaptive Frugality

#240

Post by jimbokun »

square_usual wrote: post #186
duskdozer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're the kind of person who can FIRE, you're not the kind of person who'll be happy on permanent vacation at the age of 40. Why do you think so? Some people just have more/less expensive tastes and wants than others.

Not because your tastes are expensive, but because you'll want to do productive work well into that time frame.

Having the resources to retire is a great way to do productive work, because much maybe most highly compensated work isn’t productive at all.
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